Scent of the Past
by VeneficaMelody
Summary: A one shot about Michiru's past that she keeps close to her heart even while loving Haruka.


Author's Notes: This was just a little something I dreamed up at two in the morning. I want to get back into writing Michiru/Haruka pieces, and I thought a little short like this would be helpful. I hope that it's an okay piece of writing, although I'm only posting it to see how fan reaction is. (I assume I'll get a lot of flames for Michiru having been with a man.) By the way, it's not in the right timeline, of course, since Michiru was with Haruka in her school years instead of a mysterious man.

With all that said, please enjoy.

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_**Scent of the Past**_

Sometimes, when you smell an object, you can tell of its warmth. Take apple pie: fresh out of the oven, it smells warm and inviting. Even if you don't know it's just been removed from the warmth of its baking cocoon, you can still sense it from the sweet smell.

This was what Kaioh Michiru thought of as she sat on the bench, waiting for the cab to pick her up: apple pie. Her grandmother's apple pie, to be more exact. Out of all the restaurant's she'd tried after the old woman's death, searching for that perfect slice of pie, she somehow knew that she'd never find it again.

Maybe someone else wouldn't be thinking of something as mundane as the scent of warm pie, sitting in a rainstorm waiting for a cab that was already ten minutes late. But for Michiru, faced with the news of her past's defection, it was a memory that gave her comfort. If she had to go home, to face her lover's accusations, she wanted to find solace in memories of old times; happy times.

Every drop of rain that fell on her was cold; lifeless. Sometimes, in a poetic mood, Michiru would compare the raindrops to tiny diamonds: just waiting to find the perfect pair of lovers to fall on and join them together with a summer night's magic. But tonight, a dark hole in her heart kept her from any of those happy imaginings.

As a soldier, a warrior for the white moon, one would think that Michiru wasn't given to the flights of fancy that sometimes took her over. But, like many women, she loved the escape into a fantasy. Maybe that was what had shaped her life before becoming Sailor Neptune, finding the warm love in Haruka's embrace. Was it her heart's longings for a happy fantasy life that had left her past sizzling in the embers of a broken dream?

She wasn't sure anymore, but she did know that her past had left open a lot of doors that were better left unclosed; doors that would put wounds onto the hearts of the people she cared about. The fantasies that had been the cornerstone of her life before Haruka had gotten her into a world she hadn't expected.

A world of responsibilities that were very different from her duties as Sailor Neptune. The life… of a mother.

Michiru, a girl who preferred to keep her painting and musical ability a secret from everyone for fear of how they would see her. A girl who swam in the desire that, someday, she'd have the perfect life. Like the posters of the "perfect family" that had, for a short time, been posted around the high school by family-rights' groups.

Barely without knowing how, she'd fallen into a relationship with a man quite a few years older. One of the teaching assistants, twenty years her senior, who had offered private lessons after seeing her artistic ability.

At first, it had been an innocent student-teacher relationship, and she hadn't minded the extra attention she was given. Although she wanted her art to remain a secret, Michiru had known that polishing her rough edges would be a bonus, and, after all, it was just for school. They didn't have to know her real talents!

After a few months, the man had begun to get a little more friendly. It had all happened so quickly that Michiru, in an innocence she should have already grown out of, had let it progress far past the point she'd always known she would stop at. Why? She didn't know, only to say that she'd been lonely; reaching out for the only comfort offered to her.

Of course, a child had never been part of the equation, and the man had broken off the relationship. It hadn't hurt, as she'd thought it would; it had just been a blank numbness that settled over her. She thought of him, as she knew she would, but it was as if she were a casual observer of the memories that tripped through her mind even as her body grew and molded itself to fit the new cargo.

Her parents had been horrified, of course, and had fought to have the teacher fired. When it had never been proven that he was the father -- he'd left town, giving reason of a better paying job in another city -- he had remained as a teacher. Doing the same thing to other girls? Michiru didn't want to think of it; she just wanted him to slip from her memory, silently as a mouse in the night.

But was that possible, even without the child?

_Without_ the child-- That thought had never been voiced before, but suddenly it crashed upon Michiru like a wave as she waded through her seventh month of pregnancy. She'd left school, of course; her parents were too ashamed to let her face anyone there.

Slowly, methodically, the plans were set in motion. How would Michiru's life go on without the child in it? She knew she wasn't ready to be a mother; didn't even know if she'd ever want to be one. A good home, that's what they'd find for her baby. A baby born too soon; if it should have even been born at all.

Michiru knew she wasn't a bad person. She kept in contact with the family who took the child in, (a girl, after all); sent monthly child support even if it wasn't necessary, (the family was quite well off); requested pictures of the girl's life (she was quite beautiful!); and she never stopped loving the child of her own womb.

It just hadn't been the right time for her to have a child, she knew, and perhaps she was never meant to raise one. Living with Haruka, that was a pleasant life, and it made her happy. It took away the daydreams and the world of wading in murky half-realities that had shaped her growing-up years.

Even if her life with Haruka wasn't perfect, without tears and fights and fears; whose was? It was enough. There was love.

Even if she never told Haruka of her past; of where the three hundred dollars went each month: what did it matter?

It was a happiness born of her new life, and it was enough. So what if she'd just come from the offices of the adoption agency, finding that the child, now eighteen, wanted to find her birth mother and have a life with that side of her parentage? It could happen, maybe, if it was the right time.

Perhaps… It was time to stop living in the half-realities she'd never really dropped; still believing in the "perfect family" posters she'd always gazed at. Could she ever stop living in the dreams, using a child's way of thinking?

Maybe, if faced with her own child… Shaking off her thoughts, Michiru got to her feet as the cab made its' way up the street. It was worth it, to find out.


End file.
